How to Do Things Badly

I’ve been training my whole life for this.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Downward Dog isn’t the worst place to have a revelation. Picture a small conference room with a group of lithe women twisting into impossible pretzelish manifestations of yin and yang. Flyaway hairs gathered artfully around their luminous (but never sweaty!) faces. Arched backs, long columns of necks bent like reed grass toward the dim lighting. And then picture me: Two steps behind the group in child’s pose—my favorite—contemplating the coffee I’ll have after class, whether that love scene I’m writing makes physiological sense (it does not!), if it’s possible to be an unskilled breather. 

It’s then that I realize anew: I’m bad at yoga. Like, truly so bad that teachers of yore have gently but firmly suggested I sign up for beginner-beginner yoga, making me wonder how italics could sound so damn aggressive in a studio that resembles a forest fairy’s fever dream. I’ve taken lots of classes throughout the years and even though I get marginally better, I’m always the downward dunce. 

And the real revelation? It doesn’t bother me all that much. 

Maybe it’s because my teacher and friend (hi, Alyssa!) is the gentlest and most patient instructor, more focused on creating mindful personal experiences than achieving yogic excellence. Or maybe it’s because I like all the women in the group, friends I’ve passed many times in the pick-up lines—women who, too, understand the inevitability of occasional hot messdom. 

But really, I think it’s because I’ve become more comfortable with doing things badly. This is an underrated skill. 

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Lately, I’ve been noticing my daughter’s focus on achievement. She wants perfection; shies away from the messy, the difficult. And she comes by her perfectionism honestly. My familial line is rife with rigid, often joyless achievers—and magnificent breakdowns, the unfortunate consequence of such a lifestyle. I want to tell her that this is not the path I’d like to guide her down. That we are meant for wildness and exploration and, sometimes, failure. That process is as important as product. 

Like many of us, my first instructor in the joy of process—and painting—was Bob Ross, that bearded and beatific PBS icon. More therapist than painting instructor, scattering wisdom throughout his monologues like flecks of multicolored birdseed. Happy little rivers. Happy little trees. If he splattered his canvas unexpectedly, he’d turn it into a stump or a squirrel. His love of mistakes bred a deep acceptance in us that strains towards transcendence. If we can not only accept but love our mistakes, where might we find ourselves? If we’re lucky: in those happy little clouds.

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During my annual office clean-out, I found old drafts of poems, the first book covers I designed, love notes from young relationships that burst like screaming supernovas. More evidence of things I did badly. Within that ephemera of failure, I discovered my old watercolors, hardly used, somehow beckoning in this season of life. WWBRD?

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that a blank canvas curdles my blood and stops my breath, a sort of post-traumatic reaction to studio art classes where I was consistently the worst painter in the room. Once, in Figure Drawing 101, I walked out after ten minutes of staring at an empty sketchbook. Painting is just one of those things I’ve never been able to get. I can describe the world in words, but I can’t replicate it on a canvas. The brush has often felt like an enemy, unpredictable and antagonistic, stubbornly refusing to cooperate with my militant wishes. (Because militancy, of course, is the key to good art.) Every painting I’ve ever undertaken has been a study in disappointment: I see the glaring gaps between imagination and reality.  

But, that afternoon, I poured some water into a mason jar. I flicked the crusty bits of paint off my tubes. And I started again. Not for the product, but the process. For Bob and his happy accidents. 

Watercolor is a unique medium. It doesn’t conform easily to rigidity. It wants to taper and flow. To sidle into the fibers of the paper like a shiver of anticipation. Watercolor is a call to release, to ride the wave of unexpected transformation. I absolutely hate it. 

And it’s good for me. Watercolor teaches me that I can’t control everything. That I have to work hard at this one thing and possibly never be good at it. And let me tell you: that first painting was terrible. I can picture my art teachers peering down their noses at it, wondering how such a thing could emerge outside a first-grade classroom. And truly, honestly, emphatically: I don’t care. I got such satisfaction in watching the spiral of muddled colors, in holding the brush and understanding that my body was in charge for once, instead of my overactive mind. It’s the same satisfaction I feel when I wake in the morning after a yoga class, sore and only slightly more flexible, but eager for my next class anyway.

You can experience great joy in doing things badly.

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You know how job interviewers will often ask that dreaded question—What’s your biggest weakness?—and we all give some BS answer like, “I’m bad at working so hard that my team finds me indispensable and I get too many promotions and they name me the corporate wunderkind, which doesn’t fit neatly on a desktop placard!”? But the question can be useful when we answer honestly. The things we do badly are sometimes the things that consume us. We self-deprecate: I’m not a good artist; I’m not a good hiker. They become markers of our identity, as much as our achievements. 

I like the idea of celebrating the things we do badly because it shows a kind of reckless commitment to joy. We persist because the alternative—not doing the thing at all—feels more like a failure than the attempt. And what’s lovelier than admitting our limitations while in the same breath striving to leap beyond them? When in doubt, just imagine Bob, my erstwhile mentor, whispering in your ear: “If what you're doing doesn't make you happy, you're doing the wrong thing.”